ELEPHANT SEAL
Posted on 12/20/2006 11:43:29 AM PST by neverdem
The scare du jour on global warming is a massive inundation of our coast caused by rapid loss of ice from Antarctica. It's a core point in Al Gore's science fiction movie, and it continues to be thumped by doomsayers around the world, in the echo chamber of the alarmist media. It's also a bunch of hooey.
If you could take the boredom, you could have read hundreds of news stories on this since An Inconvenient Truth debuted on May 25. But you'll find very little mention of a paper that appeared a mere six weeks later, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, which should have stopped the whole show cold. The work is by Brenda Hall from the University of Maine and several co-authors.
First, Gore's science fiction. Due to the warming of the surrounding ocean, big ice-shelves begin to crack off and float away. Because that ice is floating, it doesn't raise sea level a bit. But then the ice cracks all the way back to where it is grounded on the ocean floor. That stuff isn't floating and the ocean rises dramatically, some twenty feet in a hundred years. Much of Manhattan, the movie suggests, is under water, along with just about every other coastal city.
Now, the truth. The notion that this is going to happen soon has just been fatally harpooned by giant Elephant Seals (Mirounga leonine). They generally hang out a long distance form Antarctica. Most of their breeding rookeries are a good 2,000 miles away on islands in the open ocean, where they feed. Most of the Antarctic coast is hemmed by huge ice shelves that prevent them from finding food.
But that wasn't always the case. According to Hall's paper, a large area of the Antarctic coast was ice-free...
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Elephant Seals? Obviously Republican Seals and thus can be totally ignored..........
"harpooned by giant Elephant Seals"
Ah-ha! Revenge of the Elephant Seals! The harpoons and the tables they were on are turned.
Al Gore lies - People Die
We show that southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) colonies existed proximate to the Ross Ice Shelf during the Holocene, well south of their core sub-Antarctic breeding and molting grounds. We propose that this was due to warming (including a previously unrecognized period from 1,100 to 2,300 14C yr B.P.) that decreased coastal sea ice and allowed penetration of warmer-than-present climate conditions into the Ross Embayment. If, as proposed in the literature, the ice shelf survived this period, it would have been exposed to environments substantially warmer than present.
You can get the crux of what the science shows but its like pulling teeth! Probably would have been clearer if the scientist, Brenda Hall, had written her own article.
Has anyone explained to AlGore what an ice age is, and how the advent of homo sapien HASN'T changed the earth's climate-the ice ages will continue to come and go.
ELEPHANT SEAL
btt
That wouldn't matter. Ice flows under sufficient pressure -- more precipitation in Antarctica would simply push the ice sheets out to sea a bit faster, thus keeping the total size of the ice cap more or less constant.
Wait just one minute!!!!
Are you suggesting that Global Warming is not man made? You are using "fuzzy science" to suggest that Al Gore's book is science fiction.
BTW - In some circles Al Gore is credited with inventing the internet. I think it is only appropriate that we also credit him with inventing Global Climate Catastrophe.
It's not floating (on water), it's a continent. I understand the displacement effect but it does not apply to Antarctica in general.
[Has anyone explained to AlGore what an ice age is, and how the advent of homo sapien HASN'T changed the earth's climate-the ice ages will continue to come and go.]
Good luck. You will have to start by explaining to him what ICE is.
Explain to Algore what ICE is? Algore INVENTED ice.
That would be Boyle's Law that you are alluding to.
That's a different issue. The one I'm talking about is why all the water on Earth doesn't slowly accumulate into the ice caps -- when the ice gets thick enough, it flows out to sea, drifts into warmer regions, and melts.
Better yet, next time ask a Moonbat why the Sun is yellow. They usally answer that it's irrelevent. No, it's not. The Sun is yellow because it is burning Hydrogen. When it has exhausted its Hydrogen fuel it will start to burn Helium. This is when a star becomes a Red Giant. All the Inner Planets will go whoosh.
Similar concept.
Somebody call Drudge!
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